24 Responses

I have spent a lot of time at that beach, I got attacked by a dog there as a child, I got stoned in the dunes as a teenager and, well, other things too. I spent eighteen years of my life in that area before moving away for uni, this is my home town

When I was a kid in England people would pack solvent for tar on clothes as part of the standard kit to go to the beach. (this was after the Torrey Canyon wreck, plus ships would pump their bilges and pollute the sea with oil).

That ship had maybe 2000 tonnes of oil. A supertanker has over 500,000 tonnes, and the Deepwater Horizon disaster spilt more than that.

It's kinda ironic that the whole high-carbon beach house/4WD/powerboat lifecycle that many NZers aspire to inevitably fucks up the same environment they're enjoying.

True. Hadyn put a lot of himself into this, which makes it hit home even harder.

I spent a few summers at Mt Maunganui as a child, so it also has a special place in my heart. Eventually the oil will go away (both through humans and nature), but until that happens, it really really sucks what's happening all along the coast.

I have sailed across the bay and around east cape several times. I walked around the beach on white island, collided with a giant sun fish and watched the albatross. I don,t get this need to have played on the beach at Mt Maunganui in order to feel something about a crude oil spill. I would feel more upset, if this had occurred around Fiordland, And I might never go there.

Some rather clever person had written huge letters in the sand spelling out “Clean Me”.

Where "huge" = ~24 metres high, impressively neat lettering too! Less impressive the scruffier "NO Mining John" a mere 3-5 metres, ambiguous without a comma of course so I have to feel ambivalent, but perhaps clear enough in the context.

I've been travelling, felt the urge to climb Mauao again for the first time since childhood close to 50 years ago and saw this from the summit last Saturday when the beach was still closed. Rena lurking offshore, stranded as if another flat-topped island inside the horizon, but sinsister, while a similar-sized container ship headed out and north past Mayor Island ...

I swam from that beach at Christmas, first time in NZ for nearly 5 years. Left with so many happy memories of the girls playing in the sand, exploring, just enjoying a gorgeous sunny beach Christmas holiday. Now my friend is making food to take down to the volunteers and my mum is knitting pj's for the penguins to stop them ingesting oil. Not happy. Not happy at all. Nice to see the owners were recently flush enough to pay a dividend to their shareholders, so maybe they will stump up the cash. Not holding my breath though.

I completely agree Sacha, my Iwi is from the Bay of Plenty. I'm particularly worried that containers are washing up at Te Kaha. It's where my Great Nana's family are from. Not many people go there, and if you are familar with the area, you'll know there are so many beautiful little bays all the way around that coast line. Some that are hard to access, some that are Tapu. If containers are making it there, then oil probably is too. These bays have caves, rock pools, they are teeming with life and they really don't get many visitors with only one road around that coast from Opotiki all the way to Gisborne. This coast line feeds many locals. I know there is going to be no way to clean the oil from many of these beautiful bays, and I wonder if many kiwi's will even know. It makes me want to cry.

Don’t worry so much, John Key says he might sort some kind of compensation package for business who might suffer any loss, being that nature is primarily a commercial recreational resource. Those inaccessible places on the east cape are only cute cultural trinkets that have almost no economic output.:(

I've been getting reports from my bro-in-law at Maketu, where he's helping with the clean-up. Pretty dispiriting stuff.

The godwits had just arrived back at the estuary a week or so before the Rena ran aground. Among them, the famous E7 (who was tracked a few years ago as the fastest to fly the Alaska-NZ route - nearly 12,000km non-stop in 8 days). She's quite the iconic bird - she's only got one leg these days, which would make it all the harder for her to wade her way to safety if/when the oil washes in.

Funny how we saw a lot of news about Happy Feet, but very little (so far) about this highly symbolic "Sad Foot" and her dotterel pals. The wetlands people & DOC are keeping a close eye and have taken several dozen of the endangered dotterels into protective custody, but the bird sanctuary is really at the mercy of the winds and the tides. And it's nesting season. :-(

I have been to Te Kaha for family holidays and agree. The coastline will make it very difficult to assess the damage, let alone clean it up. The sea life there is so exuberant but it will be hard pressed to resist this.

My wife and I came to NZ for our honeymoon in 2002 and have returned 5 times since. We love New Zealand and Mount Mauganui was where we were happiest. From the UK, we hadn't really put two and two together, and were heartbroken when we worked out that Mount Beach had been affected. We feel kind of sick and angry, and sorry for all those suffering in their various ways. Sadly this sort of misery is likely to happen more and more often.